A Quick Guide to Improving Your CNC Business
A message from Learn Your CNC
This great guide was written for the Learn Your CNC blog by Christine Evans from Fictiv. Although this article mentions some larger scale ideas, you can still get a lot of value from the information as I know that the majority of the Learn Your CNC audience are small businesses or hobbyist. So I encourage you to read through this article and discover ideas that you can apply to your CNC business or hobby.
Enjoy!
-Kyle
CNC machining as a digital fabrication technology is still in great demand. It offers an impressive arsenal of materials and workable turnaround times for small production runs. Compared to CNC, 3D printed prototypes are a bit ordinary in terms of part finish, accuracy, and strength.
Since most cities have several CNC service providers serving a range of customers, how can you stand out?
A Blueprint for Success
Numerical control technology has been around for a while. The earliest version was invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard and used for mechanically computerized weaving looms as early as the start of the 20th century.
Several MIT collaborations in the 1950s fueled the commercialization of CNC machines as we know them today. The largest modern-day fabrication service providers have all the latest technology at their disposal, from full 5-axis machining capabilities to CNC turning and sophisticated color and texture finishes.
So as a CNC service agency, you are in a mature field with fierce competition. Let’s look at some ways you can improve operations in a dynamic business landscape.
1. Specialize
When starting a manufacturing company, it is tempting to try to deliver all things to all people. However, for your organization to run smoothly, this is the exact philosophy to avoid. You also don’t want to focus on one specialty area because demand can be volatile and unpredictable, plus this will cause you to lose brand recognition.
Instead, exploit an area of special interest, like a specific industry or technology, that will help your company stand out. Then make sure you have skilled workers and the right equipment in place to handle additional jobs in peripheral areas of focus.
To avoid the jack-of-all-trades pitfall, consider the following areas of expertise:
Transportation – custom parts for cars, bicycles, aircraft
Consumer electronics – enclosures, phone covers, circuit boards, heat sinks, connectors, precision CNC for semiconductors
Healthcare – custom prostheses and orthoses, sterilizable tools, implants, equipment parts
Sports – custom equipment, safety gear
Marketing – custom signs, merchandise, in-store displays, business gifts, office tools
Energy – valves, pump parts, piping, drill bits, blowout preventers, gears
Government contracts
2. Embrace New Technology
If it can result in a competitive advantage, consider upgrading with breakthrough technologies. A 4 or 5-axis machine adds a level of geometrical complexity that opens up a slew of new applications.
Electrical discharge machines (EDMs) use spark erosion instead of mechanical cutters, preventing stresses on the work piece for high-precision components and deeper features.
Consider a water jet cutter instead of a laser for cleaner results and high accuracy.
Add finishing options such as anodizing, powder coating, pad printing, or bead blasting. Or make a renovation project out of modifying old mechanical equipment to have CNC functionality, such as lathes or vertical mills.
3. Careful Job Acquisition
The overall goal of a manufacturing shop is to minimize downtime. To achieve optimal machine occupancy, it is essential to triage new projects into the following categories before accepting them:
Runners – Ongoing parts that can leave a machine running for 35 weeks of the year or more, in its own dedicated work cell.
Repeaters – Types of projects that come in on a somewhat regular basis.
Strangers – Uncommon projects that are not exactly in line with core operations in terms of required skills and equipment.
It is great to have runners, but in practice these do not often occur and it is best to focus on repeaters for steady incoming work. Strangers should be kept to a minimum and only accepted if they have a purpose of special benefit or fall in line with the growth goals of the company.
4. Adopt the Lean Manufacturing Policy
The idea of lean manufacturing started at Toyota and was soon adopted by other billion-dollar corporations. And while the variability of small workshops makes full-fledged methodological frameworks for running large assembly lines hard to implement, there is some overlapping wisdom.
At its basis, lean operations are all about cutting away the unnecessary and establishing incremental efficiency boosts. So take a few days a year to analyze how a product is routed through the facilities and re-examine workflows that lead to bottlenecks.
The goal is to establish a small number of process flows and streamline them to make the company run like a river.
5. Optimize Parameters
At the micro-level of operations, make sure to optimize all machine settings to your goal. In CNC-land, this is mostly about hitting the sweet spot between feeds and speeds: the speed of the tool head across the work-piece vs. the spindle rotation speed.
These need to be tweaked to perfection for each material in order to maximize surface finish, throughput speed, or tool life. The aim should be to feed the right thickness of material into each cutting edge as it moves through the work so that it creates chips and not dust.
In CNC terms, this is called the chip load. It is fundamental parameters like these that enable leaps in efficiency when set right.
6. Thoughtful Budgeting
With on-demand manufacturing comes on-demand spending; it is unnecessary and unwise to invest in new technology unless it can serve a structural purpose in the company right from the start.
Establish smooth-running operations and steady cash flow first. Invest deeply in necessary tools, make sure some spare machinery is in place for redundancy, and only then seek to expand and innovate. Consider machining your own tool bits and other replacement parts.
In this era of digital transformation, entirely new systems are entering the scene, like digital readouts (DROs) for added precision and sensors to detect axis feed or ball screw malfunctions. AI-infused sensors add connectivity to the machine park to optimize efficiency and worker safety.
In what is known as Industry 4.0, machines will learn to self-diagnose and schedule preventive maintenance, backed by data accumulations that can be used to further detect bottlenecks and improve efficiency. Yet it is of primary importance to critically analyze the value of each investment, using cutting-edge technologies only when they are pivotal to creating a competitive advantage.
Also take care to weigh the benefits of a downtown, suburban, or industrial facility location against the drawbacks. Consider creative alternatives such as converting a garage box or abandoned factory hall into your work floor. And in addition to contract work, seek external financial resources such as government R&D grants or crowdfunding, and choose whether private equity vs. venture capital would best suit your company.
7. Create a Brand Identity
Where manufacturing operations were traditionally more or less the invisible gears of society, they are now more and more a thriving part of it. Fabrication labs and prototyping houses are blooming in today’s metropolitan areas, and they’ve made it possible for anyone to become an entrepreneur.
And with that visibility comes the need for a social reputation and brand image. Think about the values of your target audience and the direction in which you want to take the company, and see how you can best fit into the local business landscape.
It should be relatively easy to find a graphic artist who is also web design-savvy. A simple website with a social media outlet, blog section, or YouTube channel can be enough to spark awareness. Use humor and creativity to spice up the mood. Make a virtual tour of the shop floor with a video or interactive 3D scan on platforms like Sketchfab.
Consider adding a design-for-machinability guide for potential customers, with guidance for programs like Rhinoceros and the Grasshopper plugin, since it will categorically reduce design and file errors. And when confident enough to teach about your craft, there will be more enthusiasts to follow CNC workshops and webinars than you might have imagined.
8. Sell Own Product
As a company you want to retain a core focus while keeping a few options open to diversify in case of varying demand. One way is to make use of your manufacturing prowess by inventing an own product line.
Do some research to find out if there is local need or want for the items, or if you can find client companies willing to switch suppliers. CNC machining lends itself well to bulk pricing, given that prices can be reduced by 90% at a part quantity of a hundred, which makes the switch all the more attractive. Products can be anything from medical products to sports bike parts or customizable home decor. And your web design talent will be able to set up an accessible online store.
In giving your products an edge over the competition, remember the 5 P’s of marketing. You can offer a better price, improved quality product, do better in promotion and public relations, offer simplified logistics, and attract customers because of their ability to think along in the design process or because they have a good feeling about the reliability of the services you provide.
Company-owned products have great potential to become the aforementioned “runners.” When things really start to take off, consider harnessing the power of in-house CNC machinery to create injection molds for part quantities over 1,000. After you gain enough expertise, you can add an injection molding service to your portfolio.
9. Maintain Relationships
More important than creating good parts is to have good processes in place to make those parts. Still more important are the relationships that spark new projects.
Find connections among friends and your existing business network. Go to trade fairs to research to whom your services can provide an advantage while matching the required production cycle rates.
Start not with what CNC technology can offer but with what your manufacturing plant can mean to your client network. Create a growth plan that revolves around these relationships and set clear milestones and steps toward achieving both short and long-term goals.
Keep your contacts active by sending out newsletter updates to try to expand on existing or completed contracts. Think about what other components can be taken up into the production pipeline while staying flexible enough to pivot your prime focus where necessary.
Internally, involve staff in decisions that require higher responsibility such as redesigns and shop renovations. If you listen to their opinions and advice, their loyalty to the company will increase. Happy employees are essential for a healthy company; U.S. businesses lose up to $550 billion annually due to disengaged workers.
Offer options for service training to get both the work floor and employees ready for future developments. Train machine operators into experts with specific skills, such as CAM, G-Code, and Fusion 360 design software. Motivate them to do special side projects to improve their skills, like entering competitions in design and fabrication.
10. Don’t Get Overambitious
Don’t get too optimistic about reaching goals. There will be failures and successes, and the important thing is to keep learning from both in order to create an environment of continuous improvement.
Likewise, your employees are people with lives beyond their job. They will not always be able to work overtime or crunch to meet a tight deadline. It is important to offer team-building opportunities and ways for them to interact as humans—so you can promote relationships among your employees rather than focusing solely on the outcome of their work.
Betting all your hopes on technology and full automation is a pipe dream as well. Having access to the latest CNC innovations is fantastic, but more important is having a streamlined operation and smartly evolving from there in a staged process where complexity remains manageable. Rather than focusing on a high-tech futuristic dream, stay focused on a global company objective without branching off too much.
Find What Works Best for You
This post has summed up the main guidelines for improving your small to medium-sized CNC manufacturing operation. However, these are only raw ingredients, and the rest is up to you. While thorough planning is key, what works best for your organization may rely on unique factors, so finding the optimal setup for your company may require some experimentation and testing.
